http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic.../603210328/1148 Supplies of E85 are getting tight so the price is going up. MTBE is being phased out. Distribution system isn't nearly what it needs to be and more damning as far as I'm concerned are the complaints coming from the refiners: "The refining industry says it warned Congress for years about the difficulty ethanol producers would have in offsetting the loss of MTBE, which accounts for about 10 percent of the volume of every gallon of gasoline with which it is blended. "'When it comes to ethanol, Congress is guilty of more irrational exuberance than on any other issue,' said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association."
Hard to believe Congress could express any higher degree of "Irrational Exuberance" then they did when they authorized Bush to invade Iraq.
The refiners are right. There's no way in the short term that we're going to be able to produce or import enough ethanol to replace MTBE AND push E85. E85 is a waste of time right now. Let's get rid of MTBE first, then, once we have the production capability worry about expanding beyond E10. Either way we're reducing our oil imports by the same amount. It's going to take a while to get cellulose ethanol into production in meaningful amounts. That's where we need to be focusing. That and reducing the amount of energy that the transportation sector consumes through efficiency measures. We need several good solutions, not just one.
